A computer network is a collection of interconnected computing devices that exchange data and share resources. In a packet-based network the computing devices communicate data by dividing the data into small blocks called packets. Certain devices within the network, such as routers, maintain routing information that describes routes through the network. In this way, the packets may be individually routed across the network from a source device to a destination device. The destination device extracts the data from the packets and assembles the data into its original form. Dividing the data into packets enables the source device to resend only those individual packets that may be lost during transmission.
Virtual private networks (VPNs) are often used to enable remotely located sources and receivers, e.g., remote customer sites, to share data. For example, a VPN may enable two or more remote customer sites, i.e., private networks, to securely share data over a public network, such as the Internet. In some cases, a VPN may be configured to support multicast traffic, such as Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), desktop conferences, corporate broadcasts, music and video web casts, and other forms of multimedia content. If a particular VPN is transmitting multicast traffic over the public network, it is referred to as a Multicast VPN (MVPN). Further details of MVPNs are described in Internet Draft, DRAFT-IETF-L3VPN-2547BIS-MCAST-10, “Multicast in MPLS/BGP IP VPNs,” Internet Engineering Task Force, Jan. 28, 2010, and Internet Draft, DRAFT-ROSEN-VPN-MCAST-08, “Multicast in MPLS/BGP IP VPNs”, December 2004, the entire contents of each of which are incorporated herein by reference.
For one or more MVPNs, provider edge (PE) routers coupled to the customer sites may conceptually build a multicast tree to carry multicast traffic from a multicast source through the public network so that the customer sites receive the multicast traffic as if the customer sites were directly attached to the same private network as the source. As an example, the MVPN may use protocol independent multicast (PIM) as a multicast routing protocol to forward multicast traffic from sources to receivers or subscriber devices for particular multicast groups within the customer sites. PE routers communicate using PIM control messages, including join requests and prune requests, to propagate requests from receivers to join or leave a multicast group upstream toward the source of the multicast traffic and thereby build the multicast tree. PE routers may communicate with other PE routers within an autonomous system using an Interior Border Gateway Protocol (IBGP), and may communicate with routers outside the autonomous system using an Exterior Border Gateway Protocol (EBGP).